Cuinneagáin, Eoin Ó (2025). Songing Dúchas: Amhránaíocht as Decolonial Epistemic Disobedience, Linnaeus University Dissertations No 561/2025, ISBN: 978-91-8082-276-3 (print), 978-91-8082-277-0 (pdf).

Abstract

This thesis proceeds from the fundamental position that indigenous concepts should be used in academic studies on indigenous matters. Orientating itself around this necessity, the thesis formulates a diverse set of concepts that can be invoked in academic studies that concern Gaelic epistemologies. To achieve this, it considers how amhránaíocht, the Irish word for singing a song, functions as a disobedient practice which can resist and stay opaque to epistemic colonialism-coloniality. The author’s awareness of the methodological concepts and worldview of amhránaíocht emerges out of his own engagement in the oral practice as a link in the reproduction of indigenous knowledge. 

By situating amhránaíocht and its attendant worldview within an inter-cosmological, non-hierarchical dialogue with other autonomously voiced indigenous methodologies, it moves towards an epistemic break in the academic study of amhránaíocht from anglicizing-westernizing research methods towards a Gaelic research paradigm. Oideas, the Irish word for ‘oral education’ or ‘prescription’, is advanced as a healing-based methodology which empowers the centering of indigenous perception. It shows that despite Anglo-modern intervention into the worlds of the Irish-speaking colonized, oideas has always been capable of reproducing its own methods, preserving its own mechanics of self-representation and remaining opaque to Anglo-modern methodologies of conquest.  Dúchas, a holistic indigenous concept which may be translated as ‘nature’, ‘right’ or ‘ancestral patrimony’ was reformulated during the Anglo-modern settler-colonial plantation system as a means of protecting indigenous sovereignty over land and knowledge.                

Drawing on the centrality of the long-established concepts of dúchas and oideas, the thesis formulates songing as a decolonizing methodology designed for entering into Anglo-modern domains of epistemic power. As a direct translation of amhránaíocht into English, songing disrupts Anglo-modern epistemic violence and its grammars of supremacy. Six oral Irish songs are invoked to show how songing may function as a juxtapositionary tool to sense Anglo-modern colonialism’s secondary violences reproduced in electronic archives, English literature, anthropological discourse, the logics of stage performance, music anthologies, Romanticist painting and eyewitness accounts of An Drochshaol. Songing sounds the unheard violences concealed within Anglo-modern epistemology through the reparative vocal intone. The thesis concludes by discussing how amhránaíocht and decoloniality can mutually support each other.

Ó Cuinneagáin, Eoin. 2025. Songing Dúchas: Amhránaíocht as Decolonial Epistemic Disobedience, Linnaeus University Dissertations No 561/2025, ISBN: 978-91-8082-276-3 (print), 978-91-8082-277-0 (pdf).

Ó Cuinneagáin, Eoin. 2023. The Darker Side of Jonathan Swift: On the Coloniality of Being in A Modest Proposal (1729). Estudios Irlandeses 18 (2): 11-27

Presentation: at Decoloniality in the Social Sciences Textbook convergence - Decolonial International Network and International Institute for Scientific Research, the Hague, 15/3/2017

Paper: Coloniality of Being in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal – Swift Today: His Legacy from the Enlightenment to Modern-Day Politics, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, 30/11/2017

Paper: Decolonizing Irish Diasporic Politics: On the Coloniality of Knowledge and the Project of White Epistemology in Ireland – Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland, UCD, Dublin 8/3/2018

Paper: Irish Studies and the Decolonial Turn: Awakening the Giant of Gaelic Epistemology – American Conference for Irish Studies National, at UCC, Cork, 18/6/2018

PhD Project Presentation: (Un)Sensing and (Dis)Believing Anglo-Irish Romanticism from Exteriority: Decolonizing the Gaelic Irish Subject - PhD Forum - International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, Radboud University, Nijmegen 12/7/2018 - Commentators: Prof. José Lanters (co-director of the Center for Celtic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Prof. Ondřej Pilný (Director of the Centre for Irish Studies, Chair of the Graduate Studies Board for Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University Prague and Chairperson of IASIL)

Paper: Reclaiming Cathleen? Shattering Western Enlightenment and Disengaging from the Coloniality of Knowledge in Ireland – International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, Radboud University, Nijmegen 13/7/2018

Paper: Tearing Away from the Coloniality of Irish Aesthetics: Some Reflections on Two Hunger Memorials on Turtle Island – Paper presented at American Conference for Irish Studies, Boston, USA, 20/3/2019

Paper: Decolonizing Irish Postcolonial Studies – AEDEI Conference for the Spanish Association of Irish Studies, Palma de Mallorca, 2/6/2019

Paper: Towards Decolonial Aesthesis: Delinking from the Coloniality of Perception in Ireland – the Galway Irish Studies Conference, National University of Ireland, Galway 10/6/2019

Panel Discussion: Decolonial Aesthetics at the Third Nordic Decolonial Workshop at Helsinki University, Helsinki, 13/10/2019 [Invited Guest]

Roundtable: Whiteness in the Nordic University at the Third Nordic Decolonial Workshop at Helsinki University, Helsinki 14/10/2019 [Invited Guest]

Paper: William Wilde, the Coloniality of Folklore and the Swedish Settler-Colonial State Societas Celtalogica: The 70th anniversary of the Nordic Celtic Studies Society, Uppsala, 7-9/5/2020 [invited - cancelled due to Covid19]

Paper: Decolonial/Gaelic Reflections on Method from an Irish immigrant in the Swedish Settler-Colonial State Nordic Migration Research Conference 2021, Turku [over zoom] 12/01/2021

Paper: Irish migration: the first line of defense in the White settler-colonial project? Nordic Migration Research Conference 2021, Turku, 13/01/2021 [over zoom]

Paper: Denying Relationality: White Innocence in the Swedish Settler-Colonial State Nordic Migration Research Conference 2021, Turku 12/01/2021 [over zoom]

Co-organization of Panel with Dr Seanán Mac Aoidh, Ola Majekodunmi, Anna Ní Choirbín and Dr Ben Ó Ceallaigh: Decolonial Gaelic Futures? Addressing the Potential for Gaelic Epistemology to do Decolonial Work , Towards Decolonial Futures: An Interdisciplinary conference challenging the politics of knowing and being, St Mary’s University, Twickenham London, 27/5/2021 [over zoom]

Paper: What does it mean to practice a decolonial/Gaelic attitude? Gaelic epistemologies as decoloniality, Towards Decolonial Futures: An Interdisciplinary conference challenging the politics of knowing and being, St Mary’s University, Twickenham London, 27/5/2021 [over zoom]

Paper: Anglocentric Sensibilities and the Antiquarian Movement in Ireland, AEDEI Spanish Association for Irish Studies, Vigo 3-5/6/2020 [over zoom]

Paper: Casadh an Amhráin (Turning the Song): (Re)performance towards Decolonial/Gaelic Aesthesis American Conference for Irish Studies, Derry, 5/6/2021 [over zoom]

Paper: The Birth of Irish Studies: Epistemological and Ontological Extractivism in the early 19th Century International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures Conference 2020 – Lodz, Poland 20-24/7/2021 [over zoom]

Paper: Essentialism and Anti-essentialism in the study of Gaelic ontologies EFACIS 2021– Prague – Sep 1-4 2021 [withdrawn due to illness]

Paper: Decolonial Meditations on a Free Derry Pluriversity – 50th anniversary event for Bloody Sunday - University of Free Derry organized by Bloody Sunday March Committee and Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign – 10/1/2022 [invited guest]

Paper: On the Darker side of Jonathan Swift, Legacies of Enlightenment Symposium, University of Ulster, 5/3/2023 [invited guest]

Paper: On Decolonial-Gaelic Methodologies – Decolonisation: Language, Culture and Community, Queens University and Glór na Móna, Belfast, 5/5/2023 [invited guest]

Paper: How Amhránaíocht Contests the Non-Ethics of Anglicizing/Westernizing Epistemology - Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI) 22nd Session, University of Alcalá, 31/5/2024

The Racism of Carl Linnaeus: Swedish Epistemology as based in the justification for the wealth extracted from the Diachronic and Collective Participation of the Nordic Colonial States in Chattel Slavery - European Researchers’ Night – Café Deluxe, Växjö - 10/9/2018

What does it mean to sense/believe Irish aesthetics? - Higher seminar for Literature, Linnaeus University 2/3/2019

Responding to the Coloniality of Audibility with Decolonial/Gaelic Sonorities – Thema G Seminar – Linköping University, Sweden – 15/4/21

Interview, radio Laud FMUFJC, Bogotá Colombia, 5/3/2022

Canionar como desobedencia epistemica-decolonial - presentation of thesis at thesis candidature event for doctoral program at Universidad Distrital, José Francisco de Caldas, Bogotá Colombia – 6/6/2022

Discussion Seminar with Dr Vuyolwethu Seti - Amhránaíocht as Epistemic Disobedeince, Linnaeus University Semianr for Higher Literature, 16/12/2022

Invited lecture: (De)coloniality and Ireland: The case of amhránaíocht University of South Africa, Afrocentric, Decolonial and Knowledges Otherwise, Summer School 2023, Pretoria, Azania – 16-20/1/2023

Invited lecture: (Re)constituting indigenous ethics: the case of Oidhreacht, Dúil, Cumadh and Casadh in Irish Gaelic , University of South Africa, Afrocentric, Decolonial and Knowledges Otherwise, Summer School 2023, Pretoria, Azania – 16-20/1/2023

Invited lecture: A Bheith Ann: (De)coloniality of being and the case of indigenous Irish ‘songing’ practices UNISA school of Humanities and Decolonial African Network, Pretoria, Azania, 24/1/2023

Invited lecture: Seanchas: (De)coloniality of knowledge and the case of indigenous Irish ‘songing’ practices, UNISA school of Humanities and Decolonial African Network, Pretoria, Azania, 25/1/2023

Response paper to Peader Kirby, Negotiating Paradigm Change: Idir dhá Chultúr, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, 12/6/2023

Ó Cuinneagáin, Eoin (2017). The Ancestral is the Epistemic: An Investigation into the Positionalities of White Dutch Researchers of Migration in the Netherlands. Master’s Thesis (cum laude). Graduate School of Social Sciences. University of Amsterdam. Supervisors: Dr. Yannis Tzaninis; Dr. Paul Mepschen.

Ó Cuinneagáin, Eoin (2018). Awakening Decoloniality in Irish Studies: Confrontations, Contradictions, Possibilities. Master’s Thesis (first class). Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. University of Amsterdam. Supervisors: Dr. Murat Aydemir; Dr. Rolando Vázquez.